Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As my party's junior spokesperson on defence, I will direct most of my budget contribution on the crisis in the Defence Forces. It is fair to say there will be hurt and disbelief in barracks and bases across the State this week because the Defence Forces can be in no doubt that the Government values them by plámás only. If the Government valued the Defence Forces at all, it would not have given them the paltry provision they have. It is so paltry it will leave the Naval Service alone treading water and not at the optimum complement and capacity it needs to be to defend our waters as it wishes to, as it is tasked to do and as it does so well despite all the Government neglect, as we saw recently off the Cork coast.

Seriously, in providing funding in this budget for 400 additional personnel when the Minister knows more people are leaving the Defence Forces each year under the Government than are joining because they do not feel valued, they believe their work is not properly recognised and they feel they would be appreciated in the private sector, the Government has proved them right. The Government has shown them they are not valued and their outstanding work is not properly recognised.

The Government has made the fatal mistake of forgetting that they are living breathing human beings wearing those uniforms with such pride in the name of the State and in the name of us all. It has forgotten their dignity, their pride and their need to make a decent living. The Government has forgotten their families. Where is the honour for them in this budget? The working time directive is crucial for retaining staff and recruiting high-quality candidates, but this budget does not even allow for the data to be collected on it, never mind implement its provisions next year.

The Government took its favoured talking heads on tour in the so-called consultative forum on international security where the Opposition had to make all its contributions from the floor while the Government is effectively starving the Defence Forces of the funding to uphold our neutrality and defend our skies and seas. We face new times and new threats and the Government has offered nothing in this budget to the Defence Forces in defending against those threats, just as the Government has offered nothing in housing or in health, where the crisis is deepening. This should have been a health budget and a housing budget, but by failing to invest and by failing to prioritise in the housing crisis that is a social crisis, the Government has made this the housing budget that never was. There are no proper targets for social or affordable housing and there is no regard for workers, even those who have good jobs and cannot afford to rent or buy a place to life.

The Government has turned the social contract on its head because when hard work and a good job are still not enough for somebody to put a roof over their head, it signals that the social and the political crises really have entered emergency stages. We have 4,000 children without a bed of their own. I am sure the Members all have been on holidays this summer and there is nothing like getting into your own bed. We have 4,000 children for whom the bed they got out of this morning is not necessarily the same bed they will get into this evening and this budget has done nothing to address that. There is something seriously wrong.

The Government has also washed its hands of health so that people will have to wait longer for treatment and healthcare workers will be under even more stress. This is not only a failure; it is a point blank refusal to invest in the essentials that make or break people's lives. Because we are refusing quality of life that depends on quality of services that have nose-dived under this Government, we have people waiting longer for housing, longer for healthcare, longer for assessments for their children and longer for dental appointments, and waiting endlessly for buses in north Kildare to get to work, school or college. We have children without school places in north Kildare in 2023, never mind children who are also waiting for places on the bus. Children cannot get there on a press release; they need buses. It is back to the Victorian times, the Government is taking us. We have families without proper respite and parents despairing over the length of time for assessments for their children with additional needs.

The longer this Government remains in power, the worse things are getting. People are losing some of the best years of their lives waiting for the basics that should be a normal part of modern living in society. It is time for the Government to go. It is time for something new. It is time for something better. It is definitely time for change.

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